The Kinect is awesome. From day one, I’ve said this thing has got potential. After playing with several open-source Kinect projects, I am please to announce that Microsoft has released the official SDK beta on 6/16/2011. I’ve created this quick start guide to get you up to speed in no time flat. Let’s begin:

What is it?

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7. (defined by Microsoft)

At this point, you will have to download Kinect Mouse Cursor – This is really cool because you can use your hands to control the mouse cursor. I actually used this to resize itself.

Last up is Kinect Paint – This is very cool, just make sure you read the instructions! MS Paint on steroids!

A few tips for getting started building Kinect Applications.

It appears WPF is the way to go with building Kinect Applications. You must also use a version of Visual Studio 2010.

Your going to need to reference Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll when building a Kinect Application.

Right click on References and then goto Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Research KinectSDK and select Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll.

You are going to want to make sure your project has the Platform target set to x86.

The Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit really makes things easier with extension methods and controls. Just note that this is for WinForms or WPF.

Conclusion

It looks like we have a lot of fun in store with the Kinect SDK. I’m very excited about the release and have already been thinking about all the applications that I can begin building. It seems that development will be easier now that we have an official SDK and the great work from Coding4Fun. Please subscribe to my blog or follow me on twitter for more information about Kinect, Silverlight and other great technology.